State to Seek Death Penalty in Murder of Union Woman

Franklin County prosecutors will seek the death penalty in the
case of a Washington man charged with murdering a woman in a Union
city park last summer.

Prosecuting Attorney Bob Parks filed the notice of intent to
seek the death penalty for Timothy D. Shults, 45, in court Thursday
afternoon. During the status hearing, Shults declined a plea
bargain in exchange for a sentence of life in prison with no chance
of parole.

Shults is charged with first-degree murder in the July 3, 2009,
death of Deborah Marsch, 53.

The suspect told police that he did not know Marsch but that he
was angry and she was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Investigators allege that Shults approached Marsch from behind,
strangled her, then threw her body into the bed of his pickup truck
and drove off.

Shults, according to reports, confessed to police on Sunday,
July 5, that he killed the woman, then took detectives to the
location where he dumped her body on land off Judith Spring Road
west of Union.

The notice to seek the death penalty states that the prosecution
intends to prove the following statutory aggravating circumstance
in the murder:

"The murder in the first degree was outrageously or wantonly
vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture or depravity
of mind in that the defendant's selection of the person he killed
was random and without regard to the victim's identity and that
defendant's killing of Deborah Marsch thereby exhibited a callous
disregard for the sanctity of human life."

Shults remains in custody in the Franklin County Jail on a $1
million bond.

Authorities allege that the day after the murder Shults broke
into his wife's home, waited for her to return, then told her that
he wanted her to go with him and she consented.

He then drove her car to the Labadie area and told her to walk
with him into the woods but she refused and eventually convinced
him to release her, authorities allege.

Later Saturday, after the abduction was reported, Washington
police began an investigation and on Sunday contacted Union police
who were familiar with Shults and his ex-wife who lives in
Union.

Detectives went to the ex-wife's home and found Shults there,
according to police.